The race our nation can’t afford to lose, plus a new commitment from us and a fresh set of community investments

One of the big lessons that the United States took from World War II was the need for national transportation infrastructure back at home. A system of interconnected highways, bridges, and roads was critical for national defense and would also provide much needed economic prosperity following the war.

In 1956, the government began to build the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, an infrastructure project larger than anything the country had seen since the railroads a century earlier—and paid for entirely with taxpayer money. The buildout of America’s modern transportation system transformed the U. S.

economy and way of life, creating countless new businesses and jobs, and connecting communities in ways that reshaped how Americans lived and worked. Seventy years later, we’re in the midst of the largest infrastructure buildout since the highways—our digital infrastructure.

The rapid adoption of the Internet starting in the late 1990s, and then cloud computing in the mid-2000s, changed the way we interact with information and services, and substantially lowered barriers for entrepreneurs, companies, and governments to provide new customer experiences.

Today, virtually everything we do each day—shopping, banking, stock trading, ride hailing, booking travel, receiving healthcare, streaming entertainment, as well as critical research in everything from preventing and curing disease to finding ways to use less energy and natural resources—is digitally driven and enabled by data centers, which manage the computing, storage, and access necessary for these activities.

In the last few years, there’s been a rapid acceleration of data center construction across the country with the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI). It’s still very early, yet AI is already transforming businesses, industries, and customer experiences in ways we couldn’t have imagined just a few years ago.

AI will power the next generation of businesses, hospitals, schools, and other critical public services, as well as critical defense systems, intelligence analysis, cyber defense, and satellite operations—and new kinds of skilled jobs will be created to help make it all possible.

Just like the national highway system, our country’s economy, national security, and everyday lives stand to benefit immensely. And, unlike the railroads and highways, this buildout is being financed without taxpayer money because private industry is picking up the tab.

There is urgency to this data center buildout because we aren’t the only country that sees the benefits of AI for the economy and national security, and the countries that lead in AI will shape it and get the most from it in the short and long run.

The choices we make today will determine that outcome, and a lapse in our nation’s focus or resolve could put us behind, and potentially irreparably so. With any change, there will be important questions raised, but there will also be misinformation and outright lies, and in the age of social media and 24/7 news, myths take hold faster than ever before.

In fact, this build out is so important geopolitically that there are widespread reports of various countries intentionally seeding misinformation in the U. S. about data centers to trick us into slowing down. Right now there are over 100 data center moratoriums being considered across the country. If these measures are enacted, the U. S.

could be writing its own losing ticket to this race, and the consequences would last generations. As a country, we can’t afford to find ourselves in that position.

There are clearly areas in which the technology and energy industries can be doing better (along with their government partners) but just like in the past when the country has banded together to accomplish something that’s critical for our national security and economic prosperity—we should approach this as a long-term mission that the private and public sectors pursue together.

Let’s start with some of the myths floating around, and then I’ll share a new commitment to build responsibly, and a new set of programs to benefit our data center communities. Myths vs Facts Myth #1: Data centers are taking all of our water. This is false. Data centers actually use very little water relative to other industries.

Direct data center water consumption is about 0. 5% of total U. S. direct industrial water use—orders of magnitude less than golf courses, almond farming, and many other industries. For instance, U. S. golf courses alone use ~200x more water than all of Amazon’s data centers —more in about two days than we use in a full year.

And, in a recent study of major U. S. industries that collectively account for ~50% of U. S. industrial GDP, data centers ranked lowest in water withdrawals while delivering the highest economic value per gallon. One of the most common soundbites repeated about water is that a typical data center uses five million gallons per day. This is also false.

The reality is that a typical data cen